Apparently It's Not A Very Steep Climb

Baux Provence appears to be a remarkable medieval hill town in the photos I have searched for on Google Images.  I have written ahead though, to ask:  “how high is the hill? How arduous is the bike ride up?” We’re biking there you see and I’m a bit concerned that some of us might make it only part of the way up before throwing in the towel.  

I have been told that cars are only allowed so high up.  Everyone must park and then walk the remaining distance, unless, of course, you are on a bike.  I cling to this as a central supporting beam in my architecture of persuasive blarney.   Other timber includes:  “Apparently it’s not a very steep climb.” “If we have to, we’ll walk our bikes up.”  “It’s not that important.”  “Let’s see what we think.”

Left and left again, passed an aqueduct that I wanted to believe was Roman, up the path and we’re on a golf course.  It is good that someone has mapped all this out for us.  We sail along past the putting green, yielding for golf carts and on beyond two staff like looking people sitting outside a building smoking.  “Is there a place for dining?”  They give us some simple directions, which I mess up and which sends us to an odd collection of overbuilt dwellings, sans any people.  “No, no, no, Monsieur, it’s down there.

Sweaty, dirty and nervous I entered the refined atmosphere of the upscale golf clubhouse.  I kept asking for le petit dejeuner and not the dejeuner but we got in and got a table and got fed, which was absolutely necessary before we could continue.  And it was late now, with the hill before us.  I played my hand as if it were a certainty that we’d make our way up.  But if pressed hard on multiple fronts, I knew I’d have to cave. 

It certainly wasn’t the happiest ride we’d had thus far, but we worked off the lunch and made it to a bluff, beneath the great cliff face.  I bluffed now and said there was a place to park the bikes, right up ahead, when the others finally made it to the crest before the final ascent.  Fortunately, two hundred yards up the path there was a parking slot beneath some stone stairs leading up to the hill town.  And as happens I was hit with a strong sense of resemblance to our walk beneath Mount Parnassus and a slow ascent to the Mehrangarh Fort.  How remarkable now to look down now on the Alpilles.